• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.526-533
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• 2011

This research is about the pulsatile pump system utilized in the perfusion bioreactor for the in vitro human tissue culture. A pulsatile pump system which can be applied to the culture of the vascular tissues including blood vessel is developed by using the idea of human heart's blood pumping into organs as followings: culture chamber, a pressurizing device which generates laminar pulsatile flow by controlling the x-sectional area of the culture media delivering tubing, a compliance chamber which supplies the pressuring device with a constant pressure, and a peristaltic pump which circulates the culture media in a circuit ranging from the culture chamber to the compliance chamber. The developed pulsatile pump system shows that a physiology of the human heart's blood pumping including pulsatile pressure waveform of systolic-diastolic pressure is well represented. Not only time domain but also frequency domain characteristics of pulsatile pump system which are necessary for the vascular tissue culture such as pulsatile pressure waveform's shape, the frequency, and the magnitude can be easily generated and manipulated by using the proposed system.